Born this Day

1808 Michael Balfe - Irish singer and composer (The Bohemian Girl)
1856 Lyman Frank Baum - US writer (Wonderful Wizard of Oz series of books, The Life & Adventures of Santa Claus, The Monkey Prince)
1859 Pierre Curie - French chemist who, with his wife Marie, won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903
1890 Katherine Anne Porter – US author (María Concepcíon, Flowering Judas and Other Stories, Ship of Fools)
1899 William Hume-Rothery - British founder of scientific metallurgy
1905 Joseph Cotten - Actor (Citizen Kane, The Third Man, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, Tora Tora Tora, Duel in the Sun, The Magnificent Ambersons, The War of the Worlds radio broadcast)
1909 James Mason - British actor (A Star is Born, Georgy Girl, The Verdict, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, The Boys from Brazil, Charade, The Desert Fox, Island in the Sun, Jesus of Nazareth, North by Northwest, The Last of Sheila) He qualified as an architect before turning to acting. He also played Dr. John H. Watson in the Sherlock Holmes movie, Murder by Decree
1914 Tenzing Norgay - Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer who, together with Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953, was the first to ascend to the top of Mount Everest
1918 Joseph Wiseman – Canadian actor (Dr. No, The Night They Raided Minsky’s, QB VII, Crime Story, Masada)
1918 Eddy Arnold - Country singer known as The Tennessee Plowboy (Make the World Go Away, Kentucky Waltz, The Last Word in Lonesome is Me, I Want to Go with You, I Wouldn't Know Where to Begin, Bouquet of Roses)
1923 Richard Avedon – Fashion and celebrity photographer
1926 Anthony and Peter Shaffer - British twins who both became playwrights. Among their accomplishments, Anthony wrote Sleuth, and Peter wrote Equus
1929 David Healy – British actor (Cluedo, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Doomsday Gun, Supergirl, Lillie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) He played Dr John Watson in the 1983 version of The Sign of Four
1937 Trini Lopez - Singer (If I Had a Hammer, Lemon Tree, I'm Comin' Home Cindy) and actor (The Dirty Dozen)
1938 Lenny Welch - Singer (Since I Fell for You, Ebb Tide, Breaking Up is Hard to Do)
1940 Lainie Kazan – Actress (My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Beaches, Harry and the Hendersons, The Delta Force)
1952 Chazz Palminteri – Actor (The Usual Suspects, Mulholland Falls, Analyze This, Bullets Over Broadway, A Bronx Tale, Oscar, The Perez Family, Rizzoli & Isles)
1955 Lee Horsley - Actor (Matt Houston, Palomino, Paradise, Showdown at Area 51)
1966 Greg Wise – British actor (Sense & Sensibility, Cranford, Marple: Towards Zero, Johnny English, The Moonstone, The Buccaneers)
1970 Nicola Walker – British actress (Unforgotten, MI-5/Spooks, Annika, Last Tango in Halifax, River, Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Split)
1978 David Krumholtz – Actor (Numb3rs, Serenity, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, The Lyon’s Den, The Mexican)
1978 Caroline Dhavernas – Canadian actress (Wonderfalls, Passchendaele, Off the Map, Heart: The Marilyn Bell Story)
1981 Jamie-Lynn Sigler – Actress (The Sopranos, Entourage, Call Me: The Rise & Fall of Heidi Fleiss, Ugly Betty)
1981 Zara Phillips - Daughter of Anne, the Princess Royal and Mark Phillips


Died this Day

1886 Emily Elizabeth Dickinson, age 55 - US poet (Because I Could Not Stop for Death, Fame Is a Fickle Food, I Cannot Live With You, I Felt A Funeral In My Brain, To Make A Prairie) She died in Amherst, Massachusetts. Although she was a prolific writer, only seven of her poems were published in her lifetime. After Emily's death, her sister Lavinia found almost a thousand poems in her room, all bound neatly in home-made booklets
1895 Joseph Whitaker - British publisher of Whitaker's Almanac, which first appeared in 1869. It was a Whitaker's Almanac that Porlock used when he sent the coded message to Sherlock Holmes in The Valley of Fear
1988 Andrew Duggan, age 64 – Actor (The Winds of War, J. Edgar Hoover, Falcon Crest, Doctor Detroit, Backstairs at the White House, Rich Man Poor Man, The Streets of San Francisco, In Like Flint, Twelve O'Clock High)
1995 Eric Porter, age 67 - British actor (The Forsythe Saga, Nicholas and Alexandra, The Day of the Jackal, The Jewel in the Crown, Hands of the Ripper) He played Professor James Moriarty in the Granada TV series Sherlock Holmes
2003 June Carter Cash - Country singer, songwriter and musician (Jackson, If I were a Carpenter, It Ain’t Me Babe, If I Had a Hammer), actress (The Apostle, Stagecoach, The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James, Murder in Coweta County, Gospel Road: A Story of Jesus, The Secret Storm) and author (Among My Klediments, From the Heart) She was the daughter of Maybelle Carter, and her husband was Johnny Cash. They married in 1968 after he proposed to her on stage in London, Ontario. She died in Nashville, Tennessee, less than a month before her 74th birthday


On this Day

1602 Cape Cod was discovered by British navigator Bartholomew Gosnold
1603 Explorer Samuel de Champlain sailed from France on his first voyage to Canada
1702 In London, England, the Grand Alliance declared war against France. It was the beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession, also called Queen Anne's War
1718 The machine gun was patented by a London lawyer, James Puckle. He began to manufacture it in London in 1721
1756 The Seven Years' War, a global conflict also known as the French and Indian War, officially began when England declared war on France. However, fighting and skirmishes between England and France had been going on in North America for years. In the early 1750s, French expansion into the Ohio River valley repeatedly brought France into armed conflict with the British colonies. In 1756 the British suffered a series of defeats against the French and their broad network of Native American alliances. British Prime Minister William Pitt the Elder recognised the potential of imperial expansion that would come out of victory against the French and in 1757, borrowed heavily to fund an expanded war effort. Pitt financed Prussia's struggle against France and her allies in Europe and reimbursed the colonies for the raising of armies in North America. By 1760, the French had been defeated in Canada, and by 1763 all of France's allies in Europe had either made a separate peace with Prussia or had been defeated. In addition, Spanish attempts to aid France in the Americas had failed, and France also suffered defeats against British forces in India. The Seven Years War ended with the signing of the treaties of Hubertusburg and Paris in February 1763. In the Treaty of Paris, France lost all claims to Canada and gave Louisiana to Spain, while Britain received Spanish Florida, Upper Canada, and various French holdings overseas. The treaty ensured the colonial and maritime supremacy of Britain and strengthened the 13 American colonies by removing their European rivals to the north and the south. Fifteen years later, French bitterness over the loss of most of their colonial empire contributed to their intervention in the American Revolution on the side of the Patriots
1800 British King George III escaped two assassination attempts in one day. The mad king had many enemies, but he survived another 20 years
1814 During the war of 1812, about 500 US troops crossed the border into Canada from Erie, Pennsylvania and destroyed the town of Port Dover
1862 The first baseball stadium was opened at Union Grounds, Brooklyn
1885 The Northwest Rebellion ended as Métis leader Louis Riel surrendered
1911 The US Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of Standard Oil Company, ruling it was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act
1912 The boundaries of Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec were extended
1918 The world's first regular airmail service began in the US between Washington, Philadelphia and New York. It was operated for the US Post Office by the US Army
1919 The Winnipeg General Strike began and the city was paralysed for 41 days as 30,000 workers from 52 unions walked off the job. The Robson Commission, which later investigated the strike, found it had been aimed only at improving wages and labour's bargaining position. But most government bodies feared a Bolshevik revolution was brewing. A number of labour leaders were sent to prison under war emergency sedition laws, which were not repealed until 1936
1928 The Australian Flying doctor service was started by Dr. Vincent Welsh, at Australian Inland Mission, Cloncurry, Queensland
1930 Ellen Church, the first airline stewardess, went on duty aboard a United Airlines flight between San Francisco and Cheyenne, Wyoming. She was a registered nurse
1940 Nylon stockings went on general sale for the first time in the US. All competing brands went on sale simultaneously, under an agreement between the manufacturers
1941 The jet-propelled Gloster-Whittle E 28/39 aircraft flew successfully over Cranwell, England, in the first test of an Allied aircraft using jet propulsion. The aircraft's turbojet engine, which produced a powerful thrust of hot air, was devised by Frank Whittle, an English aviation engineer and pilot generally regarded as the father of the jet engine. In its initial tests, Whittle's aircraft, flown by the test pilot Gerry Sayer, achieved a top speed of 370 mph at 25,000 feet, faster than the Spitfire of that time, or any other conventional propeller-driven machine
1942 Gasoline rationing went into effect in 17 states, limiting sales to 3 gallons a week for nonessential vehicles
1956 An RCAF airplane crashed into the Grey Nuns' Home for the Aged at Orleans, Ontario, killing 15 people, including 11 nuns
1957 Britain detonated its first atomic bomb in the Pacific
1963 US astronaut L. Gordon Cooper blasted off aboard Faith 7 on the final mission of the Project Mercury space program
1972 George Wallace, the governor of Alabama and a presidential candidate, was shot by twenty-one-year-old Arthur Bremer, while campaigning during an outdoor rally in Laurel, Maryland. Three others were wounded, and Wallace was permanently paralysed from the waist down. Wallace, one of the most controversial politicians in US history, was elected governor of Alabama in 1962 under an ultra-segregationist platform. During the 1980s, Wallace's politics shifted dramatically, especially in regard to race. In 1983, he was elected Alabama governor for the last time with the overwhelming support of African-American voters. Over the next four years, the man who had promised segregation forever made more African-American political appointments than any other figure in Alabama history